Don’t look now if you’re someone who enjoys driving. Blame Elon Musk, blame Google, blame Al Gore… but there’s no escaping the fact that, in just a few short years, we’ll all be coddled from one destination to the next inside shiny, smart transportation appliances. And you thought holding out hope for a stick-shift was audacious.

Did you ever considered eating the small green leaves of duckweed floating around in the ditches in between meadows? Probably not, duckweed has a negative connotation since it is flourishing in polluted waters. Yet, scientists and farmers are studying the possibilities of edible duckweed, shoveling it out of the ditches and bringing it to our plates.

With modern cutlery we have added a new pair of fingers to the dinner table. We use our augmented hands to prepare, serve and especially eat our food. Needless to say that eating utilities are adjusted to our habits. Due to the predicted food crisis of 2050, we might want to change these habits. Therefore, designer Wataru Kobayashi created BUGBUG, a picnic cutlery set to promote the consumption of insects (entomophagy) .

In 2012 the movie Hunger in Los Angeles, by documentary filmmaker and journalist Nonny de la Peña, was presented at Sundance Festival. Despite its shortness (only 3.5 minutes long), it was a major step towards a completely new way of telling stories: immersive journalism. The film presented a real-life situation that happened on a street of LA using a VR technique. Since then, there have been many attempts to turn this playful technology into a serious medium.

“In the future everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes”, British artist Banksy mocked the common urge to be famous. It seems this future is coming really fast: the latest researches showed how AI can recognize human faces even if meant to be incognito.

A Jardin Partagé is a shared community garden born in Lille in 1997. Since its first establishment, this phenomenon has extended across France to stimulate social relationships among the citizens and improve gardening techniques that respect biodiversity. Paris recently approved a new law, which not only allows locals to plant their own urban garden around the city, but also encourages them to develop their green thumb.

It’s safe to say there is no shortage of sunlight in the Egyptian desert. While a desert is often seen as a hostile living environment, a village situated around the Bahariya Oasis is demonstrating the contrary. The so-called Tayebat Workers Village is powered by building-integrated solar panels and provides shelter for 350 people, putting sunlight to better use.